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Comment by poisonborz | Hacker News Reader

They wouldn't have Play Services, which gives all the power of the ecosystem. Just having a good desktop back country doesn't help anything in the mobile space, as Windows Phone showed. It also won't go without experienced hardware partners, and Samsung is already in Google's pocket, the other top dogs being Chinese, who don't look for fitting in the western markets anymore.

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Not exactly. Play services/GCM is the push notification system on Android. Even on my completely degoogled phone I have to use microG to support push notifications from google's servers because every app developer has hardcoded their app to use GCM. It doesn't have to be that way. An alternate push notification service with a client alternative could be made available. Developers and users could start using it. Ideally there would be a standardized protocol, and a system setting so that the user can set their preferred push notification provider. Apps would use the system provided endpoint for push notifications and we would get a little control back. I sure wish I could self host push notifications.

Amazon Appstore (used for Microsoft's Android integration in Windows 11) uses Amazon Device Messgaing (ADM) instead of Google's Firebase Cloud Messgaing (FCM) for push notifications. A FCM receiver is built into Google Play Services to enable push notifications for Play Protect certified Android devices, but ADM is a viable alternative for Amazon and Microsoft as long as developers tailor and submit apps to the Amazon Appstore.

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/adm/overview.html

Gotify and OpenPush are open source push notification solutions, both in the beginning stages of development:

- Gotify: https://gotify.net/

- OpenPush: https://bubu1.eu/openpush/

See also https://unifiedpush.org/ which has a Gotify connector

I always wondered if a WINE for Play Services was possible.

Alredy exists to a degree as microG.

https://microg.org/

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